By: Liz Crowe
Releasing
July 11, 2017
Totally Bound
Tour Host: Tasty Book Tours
Trent
Hettinger’s turbulent formative years transformed him into a cynic—and into a
man who realized he required something outside himself to control his temper.
Something he finds as a Dom—at least for a while. But he allowed himself to
trust a woman once and was slapped back into reality with a vengeance and now
devotes all his energy into building his real estate empire, raising his
teenaged daughter…and avoiding anything resembling authentic attachments.
Melody
Rodriguez kept her head down for years—working hard, making her own money,
trying to get ahead with every deck stacked against her. She’s determined
to move beyond the ugliness that haunts her without anyone’s help. When a
mutual friend sets her up with Trent, she’s determined to have some fun with
him and move on.
A man with
nothing to left to lose. A woman hiding behind her past. When two lives spent
in emotional denial collide, it’s a perfect match—at least on the surface. But
neither Trent nor Melody are prepared for the full force of their true
feelings, once fate intervenes and blows a cold breeze into their white-hot
relationship.
He grabbed
the remote and handed it to me between bites. “Well? I thought I was getting
subjected to that horrible game.”
I took the
remote, stuck my tongue out at him and clicked on the telly. The match
flickered on after a few seconds.
“Ah, right,”
he said, sipping his beer, then tucking into the soup. “The pretty boys game.”
“Damn
straight,” I said, taking a bite of my own carnitas
creation. Pretty damn good if I say so myself. “These men are fine.”
“Guapo?” He raised a dark eyebrow at me,
which intensified the heat gathering in areas of my body I’d forgotten I even
had.
“No. They’re
too prima donna to be truly guapo.”
“Good. I
like that word being reserved for me.” He stood. “I need another one of those
amazing tacos. And you’re right. I hardly miss the cheese.”
“Of course
I’m right.” I winked at him, then felt my face flush so hot I put my hand to my
cheek.
We sat in
companionable silence, regarding the game and eating for a while. As we leaned
back, our feet up on the table, finishing our second beers, the match got more
intense. At one point I leapt up and started cursing a stream of Spanish at the
official.
“Calm down,
already. What happened?” Trent asked, amusement on his face.
“That hijo de puta claimed offsides and called
back that goal! Are you blind? Mierda!”
I flopped
back onto the couch, this time so close our thighs brushed together when I
propped my feet back on the table.
“Offsides,
eh?” Trent put his glass to his lips and eyed me over the rim. “I have no idea
what that means, at least in this game.”
I shoved our
plates aside, grabbed the salt and pepper shakers and the empty beer bottles
and attempted to explain it. After ten utterly frustrating minutes, I gave up
and threw my napkin at his face after he asked one more stupid question. “Mierda! El burro sabe mas que te!”
He leaned
back in mock horror. “Did you just call me a burro? Is that like an ass?”
I dissolved
into giggles at the look on his face. “¡Mira
qué cabrón! There, I just called you a smartass.”
“Neat,” he
said, grinning widely. We stared at each other for a few seconds too long, then
both turned to the match.
“For the
record, I did say a burro was smarter than you.”
“Ah, of
course,” he said, getting up and stretching right in front of me. I swallowed
hard and made myself not look at his ass. When he turned around again, his face
had gone pensive. “Your poor, beautiful face,” he said, out of the clear blue.
“It’s all I can do to look at you and not run out of here and kill that
motherfucker.”
I blinked
fast, covered by grabbing my beer and totally missed my mouth. A dollop of the
brew landed right on my best Real jersey. I stared down at it in horror. Trent
chuckled. I glared up at him, daring him to say anything. He tried to stop
laughing, but that made it worse. By the time I’d gotten up for a towel and
maybe a shot of that tequila, he was practically rolling around on the floor in
hysterics.
“Are you
quite finished?” I asked, brushing at the stain, my face so hot I could have
warmed a whole house in the middle of winter. I’d kept my back to him, the tall
counter between us. Mortification was making my vision blur. Or was that tears?
Shit, I’d never get this right. I was ruined. Ruined for relationships with
real men, anyway. I whirled around to tell him to take his funny bone and get
the fuck out of my apartment.
“I
think…oh…”
He was
there, in front of me, too close for it to be in any way considered casual. His
broad, black-cotton-covered chest filled my vision. His scent—a clean, fresh,
outdoorsy odor—filled my nose. His voice—deep and musical—filled my soul.
“Melody,” he
said, as he took my hands in his and brought them to his lips. Mi Dios, those lips! He kissed each one
of my knuckles softly, keeping his eyes on mine. Then he turned my hands over
and pressed his lips to first one, then the other of my palms.
“Trent,” I
whispered, my mind awash with images and sensations, all of them good for a
change.
“Sh,” he
whispered, placing my hands on his shoulders, then sliding his hands around to
the small of my back. “Sh, no talking.” His smile lit up my entire
universe—corny, but true and I’m not ashamed to admit it. “I have wanted to
kiss you since I saw you across that diner.”
“When… Oh,
right,” I said, my voice breaking at the end like a silly virginal teenager’s.
Surely he won’t want me, when he finds out I’m spoiled
goods. Surely he won’t…Surely he has got to be the best kisser in the entire
known universe.
Now Available for Pre-Order
ADJUNCT LOVERS
Brewing Passions Novella
Amazonbest-selling author, mom of three, Realtor, beer blogger, brewery marketing
expert, and soccer fan, Liz Crowe is a Kentucky native and graduate of the
University of Louisville currently living in Ann Arbor. She has decades of
experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a
three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse.
Her early
forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre,
“Romance: Worth the Risk,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers
interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”).
With
stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in
successful real estate offices and at times in exotic locales like Istanbul,
Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe
backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and
complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate and linger in the
imagination long after the book is finished.
Don’t ever
ask her for anything “like a Budweiser” or risk bodily injury.
